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In a tidal disruption event (TDE), a star is destroyed by the gravitationalfield of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) to produce a stream of debris, someof which accretes onto the SMBH and creates a luminous flare. The distributionof mass along the stream has a direct impact on the accretion rate, and thusmodeling the time-dependent evolution of this distribution provides insightinto the relevant physical processes that drive the observable properties ofTDEs. Analytic models that only account for the ballistic evolution of thedebris do not capture salient and time-dependent features of the massdistribution, suggesting that fluid dynamical effects significantly modify thedebris dynamics. Previous investigations have claimed that shocks are primarilyresponsible for these modifications, but here we show -- with high-resolutionhydrodynamical simulations -- that self-gravity is the dominant physicalmechanism responsible for the anomalous (i.e., not predicted by ballisticmodels) debris stream features and its time dependence. These high-resolutionsimulations also show that there is a specific length scale on whichself-gravity modifies the debris mass distribution, and as such there isenhanced power in specific Fourier modes. Our results have implications for thestability of the debris stream under the influence of self-gravity,particularly at late times and the corresponding observational signatures ofTDEs.

On the relative importance of shocks and self-gravity in modifying tidal disruption event debris streams